


the arc of the sky

by IronCladFeatherFeet (handschuhmaus)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, F/M, Multi, Time Travel, crackship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-16
Updated: 2019-05-16
Packaged: 2020-01-15 09:03:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18495724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/handschuhmaus/pseuds/IronCladFeatherFeet
Summary: An accident with a Force artifact sends the Palpatines hurtling forward through time and to another planet, too.





	the arc of the sky

Beru Whitesun was in the...well, large equipment shed, when her work doing painstaking reassembly on the sandstorm-damaged vaporator parts was interrupted by a stranger's voice. "Hello! Hello!" the voice was being none too courteous about its search for a reply. 

"I'm in here," Beru said, with some hesitation. The voice was male; harassment was not unheard of, and she was alone on the property, everyone else at a wedding, which Beru couldn't attend due to a strange coincidence involving rare diseases and allergies. She suddenly wished Owen Lars were here, or even his stepmother. Cliegg was laconic and she wasn't sure if she liked him yet, but Shmi and Owen were very nice. She and Owen had thought they might start dating.

"I have no idea what you've caused to happen!" a woman said. 

Beru stepped into the doorway of the shed, squinting against the unrelenting light of Tatooine's twins suns to see a couple dressed in off-world finery. "Hello?" she greeted them nervously.

"I did nothing!" the man bellowed. "Emis asked if I wanted to have a closer look at the item before the auction and there is no reason for us to have suddenly appeared in this...this wasteland of sand," he gestured to the surroundings. 

"Cosinga, clearly you did something. Because I did nothing I haven't done five dozen times before," the woman responded.

Cosinga, if that was his name, retorted "Maybe it was him!" Beru finally realized that the woman was holding an infant, wrapped so thoroughly in blankets that it resembled a bundle more than a child.

"You would really blame your infant son, rather than a mysterious artifact which Emis reported seemed to have caused people to become sick."

"Pfui. Hysteria. Curses are nonsense," Cosinga scoffed.

The woman raised one eyebrow, more manicured than Beru had seen, but to a fashion she never had, and perhaps a few weeks neglected since. "Well, until we were transported to some sort of desert planet, I was figuring he'd somehow gotten something fabricated out of, oh, cobalt or something. Radiation used to be fashionable, once, and radiation sickness does cause nausea."

Cosinga rolled his eyes, still ignoring Beru (perhaps she was hard to see with the brightness everywhere else), and scolded, "What are you going on about?"

"You might have a clue if you'd bothered to read something that wasn't about politics for once."

"I'm plenty well read, woman. All the literature in the curriculum. And it isn't as if I spend all my time on politics. I like speeders too."

"Yes, well, I don't suppose you've ever read a mystery novel or something like that, which might actually give you a clue about outlandish scenarios such as we've somehow ended ourselves up in."

Cosinga turned to Beru as if noticing her for the first time. "Hello, madam. I am Cosinga Palpatine of Naboo, and my wife and her infant son." Beru couldn't help but notice how each of them had refered to the baby as only the other's. "We somehow find ourselves near your...humble home, and would like to have shelter and food until we can manage our way back to Naboo."

"Naboo? Like when Queen Amidala visited with the Jedi?" she asked, Shmi's story her only reference point for the relatively obscure planet.

"I have no idea who that is," he said, although he seemed to be trying a bit, to be charming. 

"Can you tell us where we are, dear? I'm sure we aren't on Naboo any more." Mrs. or Lady (or whatever) Palpatine put in.

"And how would you know that? There are remote regions of desert." Cosinga protested.

"This planet has two suns," she pointed out with exaggerated calm.

"You're on Tatooine," Beru told them, still not sure how to respond to all this business of something supernatural.

"Beru! Beru!" she heard from the house, and recognized Shmi's voice. 

"Look, I don't exactly have the authority on my family farm to take you in for a length of time, but come over to the house and I'll try to host you until everyone else returns," Beru said, calmly. 

"Beru?" Shmi walked up, and unwrapped the scarf that any sensible pedestrian on Tatooine would have wrapped around their face. "Who are these people?"

"They say they're from Naboo, but they don't know Queen Amidala," Beru reported, hesitantly, wondering if Shmi had ever heard anything more from the visitors.

"She told me she was named Padme Naberrie by birth?" Shmi asked hesitantly.

The Palpatines exchanged glances. "The Naberries are your cousins," Cosinga's wife told him. "But I haven't heard of a Padme."

"No, they just had a son. Ruwee, I think." Cosinga said hesitantly.

"Forgive me, who are you? I'm Shmi Skywalker."

"Cosinga Palpatine, wife, and her son," Cosinga said again. Shmi's mouth formed into an o.

"Palpatine, you say?" she asked. "Are you any relationship to...well, to the Chancellor?"

Cosinga was confused by this. "What!? 'Chancellor'? Where? I'm not aware of any chancellors in the family, or even by our name."

Shmi answered him, "Of the whole Galactic Republic. Of course, now you're out here on the Outer Rim which pays little attention, but my son is a Jedi and sometimes he sends me letters."

Cosinga shook his head and looked at his wife, who seemed similarly baffled. "No. I do think Finis Valorum was telling me of his eventual aims at chancellorship, but I'm quite certain there's no Chancellor in Cosinga's family," his wife said.

"'Finis Valorum'?" Shmi repeated, which Beru did not find informative. "Tell me, is--is he a young man?" 

"All of seventeen, but many of our politicians on Naboo begin very young. He was two years my junior at college. Why?" Mrs. (or was it Lady?) Palpatine said. 

Beru was a little surprised to hear that she might be as young as nineteen and so only two years older than herself. Perhaps it was the elaborate garb and the cosmetics that made her look so much older than here on Tatooine.

"Finis Valorum was the Chancellor before the current one. Queen Amidala sent quite a detailed report along on events. And I should think he is at least in his fifties, if not older." Shmi explained.

The Palpatines stared at each other. "Are you suggesting we've traveled forward in time by--by more than thirty years?" Cosinga asked, carefully.

"Well, I wouldn't have guessed it," the older woman says charitably, "but that's the only answer I can see with the discrepancy in what we believe about Finis Valorum's age." 

Turning to Beru, Shmi continued "Sorry, Beru, I was distracted by the visitors. I brought you bread, mine that you've always liked," and she handed over a wrapped bundle not so different looking from the Palpatine infant before wrapping Beru in her arms.

"We should go in," Beru said calmly, when she was no longer being embraced, and she led Shmi and the two, no three, Palpatines to the house. 

When they stood in the humble Whitesun kitchen, Beru mentioned "You should probably change into local clothing. I don't think the ones you're wearing will be near sufficient against the sun or sand. I can try to find something of my cousin's--he's about your size--for you, Mr. Palpatine, and you can have something of mine for right now, ma'am." Cosinga's mouth gaped, as if he were outraged by the prospect of wearing clothes not reflecting his affluence, but he then shut it.

"And then perhaps we can comm into Mos Eisley and see if we can contact...the Jedi, unless any of you have an idea who else would have more experience with strange happenings such as this?" Shmi filled in. "The baby we can wrap in a blanket or something."

Lady or Mrs. Palpatine nodded and followed Beru down the stairs to her room, with its small windows just above the soil line and below the ceiling. 

Beru tried to find something that looked a little better than normal, not wishing particularly to humiliate her unexpected, time-travelling guests, while the baby was set on her bed. He had been so quiet that she worried for his well-being.

"I'm Amara," his mother said quietly, stripping to her undergarments, and the words unexpectedly caused Beru to turn and then automatically to survey her half-naked body. She was embarrassed to find that she rather liked what she saw. Amara was a married woman, and she nearly had a boyfriend! Even aside from the fact that they were from different times, Beru wouldn't want to disrupt those things.

"I--have to go find your husband some clothes," she mumbled, a little too fast, and rushed into her cousin's room, rumaging in his dresser until she found his second best set of clothes, clean aside from the turmeric stain down the front that wouldn't come out in the laundry. Cosinga probably wouldn't like that, but it would have to suit. Reg was a messy eater sometimes.

"Listen," Amara said to her in the hallway, "If I know Cosinga, he'll flirt with you; it's what he's been taught to do with any women of near appropriate age. Usually it would be to a political end, but seeing as you're the only one around...it'll be you. I...I don't quite mind. But I'd advise you to try not to fall in love." This seemed like odd advice; Beru did not find Cosinga especially appealing, and, well, it was otherwise with _Amara_ , even if she was holding her infant son as Beru was the clothes for Cosinga. 

When she had handed Cosinga the clothing, she looked to the kitchen. "I suppose I'll put together some dinner. The rest of the family won't be back from the wedding they went to until tomorrow."


End file.
